Category Archives: Electronic Discovery

The Scooter Store and a related company sued a competitor for trademark infringement and other causes of action for unfair competition based in part on the competitor’s purchase of keywords such as “scooter store” and “your scooter store” to trigger sponsored advertisements on the web. Defendant moved for summary judgment and also moved for a protective order that would prevent it from having to turn over information to plaintiffs concerning defendant’s purchase of the keywords. The court denied the motion for protective order.

Defendant argued that it should not have to turn over the information because plaintiffs’ trademark claims based on those keywords were without merit, as the words are generic terms for the goods and services plaintiffs provide. Defendant also asserted a need to protect the commercially sensitive nature of information about its keyword purchases.

The court rejected defendant’s arguments, ordering that the discovery be allowed. It held that “whether or not [p]laintiffs’ claims involving these terms survive summary judgment [] has no bearing on whether the discovery [p]laintiffs seek is relevant, particularly viewed in light of a party’s broad rights to discovery under Rule 26.” As for protecting the sensitivity of the information, the court found that such interests could be protected through the process of designating the information confidential, and handled accordingly by the receiving party.

[This is a post by Jonathan Rogers. Jon is a licensed attorney in California, with a focus on technology and entertainment law. You can reach him by email at jon@jonarogers.com or follow him on Twitter at @jonarogers.]

Plaintiff sued claiming breach of warranty and violations of certain state laws against consumer fraud stemming the sale of a motor coach. Plaintiff sought permission to search defendants’ hard drives to locate critical email which appeared to be missing from the original discovery production. Defendants contended that the email was not “reasonably accessible” under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(2)(B) and, therefore, they were under no obligation to produce it.

The court specified that the burden was on the party responding to discovery to identify whether there may be materials responsive to discovery requests that are stored on its system, but because of burden or cost are not reasonably accessible. However, that party cannot simply provide documents which are easily obtained and then assert that they have produced everything that is responsive to the request. If other relevant and responsive documents exist (or may exist), the party must say so and then say why those documents cannot or should not be produced.

Here, the defendants submitted only materials that were quickly accessible on employees’ desktops and made no effort to look further, even when they became aware that there was a possibility that there may be missing documents. A forensic expert asserted that he found the critical email in two separate locations on the computer network: on a local hard drive in an orphaned, but not deleted, storage file and also on a network hard drive that had been manually backed up. The expert concluded that a native Microsoft windows search of defendants’ computers would have uncovered the email and could be undertaken by an individual with no advanced computer knowledge.

The Court did not find the failure to produce the document to be a deliberate act by defendants, but that the document could have been found with minimal effort. It recognized that plaintiff (and the court) expended additional time and effort and incurred significant additional expenses searching for this document. Therefore, the court shifted half of the cost of the electronic discovery search to defendants.

Plaintiff sued his former employer seeking back overtime wages. In preparing its defense of the case, the employer sent supboenas to Facebook and Myspace seeking information about plaintiff’s use of those platforms. (The employer probably wanted to subtract the amount of time plaintiff spent messing around online from his claim of back pay.) Plaintiff moved to quash the subpoenas, claiming that his accounts contained confidential and privileged information. The court denied the motion as to these social networking accounts, but did so kind of on a technicality. The subpoenas were issued out of federal district courts in California, and since this court (in Florida) did not have jurisdiction over the issuance of those subpoenas, it had to deny the motion to quash.

But there was some interesting discussion that took place in getting to this analysis that is worth noting. Generally, a party does not have standing to challenge a subpoena served on a non-party, unless that party has a personal right or privilege with respect to the subject matter of the materials subpoenaed. The employer argued that plaintiff did not have standing to challenge the subpoenas in the first place.

[A]n individual has a personal right in information in his or her profile and inbox on a social networking site and his or her webmail inbox in the same way that an individual has a personal right in employment and banking records. As with bank and employment records, this personal right is sufficient to confer standing to move to quash a subpoena seeking such information.

This almost sounds like an individual has a privacy right in his or her social media information. But the p-word is absent from this analysis. So from this case we know there is a right to challenge subpoenas directed at intermediaries with information. We’re just not given much to go on as to why such a subpoena should be quashed.

Unlike some recent cases such as Romano v. Steelcase, which seem to give the impression that the information in a person’s social networking account is always fair game for discovery in litigation, one New York court has come down on the side of protecting the privacy of a Facebook user’s content.

Plaintiff was injured in an automobile accident and filed a lawsuit over her injuries. In the course of discovery, defendant sought photographs from plaintiff’s Facebook account and “an authorization” to access the account. Defendant claimed the sought-after discovery related to whether plaintiff sustained a serious injury.

After plaintiff did not respond to the discovery requests, defendant moved to compel. The trial court denied the motion, finding the discovery to be overly broad, and finding that defendant had failed to show the relevancy of the information to be discovered. Defendant sought review with the appellate court. On appeal, the court affirmed.

The court held that the discovery sought was too broad and that defendant had failed to show the relevancy of the information. It affirmed the denial of the motion as to avoid a “fishing expedition.”

But the holding is anything but reassuring from the plaintiff’s perspective. It affirmed the denial without prejudice to serving additional discovery requests. So it sounds as if defendant tailors its discovery a bit more closely, and shows how accessing plaintiff’s Facebook account will provide relevant evidence, it may see some success.

Plaintiff sued some corrections officers at the prison where her inmate son was killed. She learned in a deposition that one of the defendants had a Yahoo email account. So she sent a subpoena to Yahoo seeking all the email messages sent from that account during a period of more than two years.

Defendant moved to quash the subpoena, arguing that disclosure of the email messages would violate his rights under the Stored Communications Act (SCA). The court granted the motion to quash.

Subject to certain specifically-enumerated exceptions, the SCA (at 18 U.S.C. 2702(a) and (b)) essentially prohibits providers of electronic communication or remote computing services to the public from knowingly divulging the contents of their customers’ electronic communications or the records relating to their customers. The court found that no such exception applied in this case. Citing to Theofel v. Farey-Jones, it held that compliance with the subpoena would be an invasion of the specific interests that the SCA seeks to protect.

Plaintiffs claimed that defendant hacked into one of the plaintiffs’ email accounts during the litigation to get an advantage in the case. The court entered severe sanctions against defendant for doing this — it struck his answer. In litigation, that is like declaring plaintiffs the winners.

Defendant had argued to the magistrate judge that his mental illness (bipolar disorder) caused him to hack plaintiff’s email account out of fear for his security. Defendant even presented expert testimony from a psychiatrist to support the claim that he lacked the mental state to act in bad faith.

In adopting the magistrate’s findings, the district judge found defendant’s psychiatric expert’s testimony unmoving. (Mainly because defendant’s lawyers limited what the expert could say.) So the court relied on other evidence that showed defendant’s bad faith intent in accessing the email. The novel theory of “not guilty of email hacking by reason of insanity” failed in this case.

The rules of civil procedure in Illinois permit an aggrieved party to file a petition with the court asking for an order requiring unknown potential defendants to be identified. This is called a Rule 224 petition.

A couple from Ottawa, Illinois got their feelings hurt over some anonymous comments left in response to content published by the local newspaper on its website. Wanting to sue for defamation, the couple filed a Rule 224 petition. The newspaper opposed the petition. (For something similar, see Enterline v. Pocono Medical Center.)

The trial court denied the petition, applying the standards articulated in Dendrite v. Doe and Doe v. Cahill, finding that the petitioners had not presented a strong enough case for defamation to justify the unmasking of the anonymous commenters. Those cases require, among other things, that a party seeking to identify an anonymous speaker make efforts to notify the anonymous party, and present enough evidence to establish a prima facie case of defamation (Dendrite) or survive a hypothetical motion for summary judgment (Cahill).

The aggrieved couple sought review with the Appellate Court of Illinois. Reviewing the decision to deny the Rule 224 petition de novo, the court reversed and remanded, ordering the identification of the anonymous speakers to be made.

In reaching its decision, the court rejected the newspaper’s (and amicis’) arguments that the trial court should apply the rigorous standards of Dendrite and Cahill. That’s not to say, however, that the court left anonymous speakers at great risk of having their First Amendment rights trampled upon.

The court held that the mechanics of Rule 224 adequately protect the potential First Amendment rights of anonymous internet speakers. Here’s why, according to the court:

The petition must be verified – the threat of the pain of perjury should keep out half-hearted claims.

The petition must state the reason discovery is necessary.

The discovery is limited only to learning the identity of the potential defendant.

Most importantly, before the discovery will be permitted, the court must hold a hearing and determine the petition sufficiently states a cause of action.

In this fourth step, the court is to apply the standard it would apply in a Section 2-615 motion. Such a motion is, essentially, the Illinois version of a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. That is no insignificant test, because unlike federal court and other state jurisdictions, Illinois requires fact pleading. That means the petition needs to include a significant amount of specific information to survive the motion to dismiss.

A troubling aspect of the ruling is the omission from the test of a requirement that the party seeking discovery attempt to notify the anonymous target of the inquisition. The appellate court held that a trial court may, in its discretion, impose such a requirement.

But it would be nice to know that the real party whose First Amendment interests are at stake (the anonymous speaker) is guaranteed a fair opportunity to argue from his or her perspective. After all, it’s that party with the real incentive to do so. Let’s hope the trial courts exercise that discretion wisely (and that they know in the first place that they have that discretion).

The video camera onboard a locomotive captured the moments before the train struck a car at a railroad crossing, killing one of the occupants. In the inevitable lawsuit against the railroad following the accident, the plaintiffs’ lawyers demanded that the video of the accident be produced in discovery.

The railroad objected to the production of the video absent a court order keeping it confidential, arguing that the presence of services like YouTube would permit the video to be widely distributed to the public. To keep the video from serving as “entertainment for gawkers looking to satisfy their morbid curiosity,” the railroad wanted only the parties, lawyers, staff and experts to be able to see the video.

The court rejected the arguments and found that nothing in the video depicted gruesome images of death or injury. It denied the railroad’s motion for protective order. So if you’re into this kind of content, keep an eye on YouTube. Though from what I gather from the court’s description of this video, there’s plenty of gorier stuff out there.

The New Jersey courts have a reputation of being protective of “informational privacy.” See, e.g., State v. Reid. A recent decision concerning employee privacy in personal emails adds to that reputation.

Plaintiff-employee used a work-issued laptop to access her Yahoo email account, through which she communicated with her lawyer about her lawsuit against the employer. During the discovery phase of that employment discrimination lawsuit, the employer used computer forensics to recover those Yahoo emails that had been copied to the computer’s temporary internet files folder.

Counsel for plaintiff demanded that the employer turn over the recovered emails, arguing that the communications were protected by the attorney-client privilege. When the employer agreed to turn them over but not discontinue use of the information garnered from them, plaintiff sought relief from the court.

The trial court denied relief and plaintiff sought review with the appellate court. That court reversed, and the employer sought review with the state’s supreme court. The supreme court upheld the appellate court’s decision, holding that the employee had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the communications.

The employer relied on a broadly-written company policy through which the employer reserved the right to review and access “all matters on the company’s media systems and services at any time.” But the court rejected those arguments.

Framework for the analysis

The supreme court considered two aspects in its analysis: (1) the adequacy of the notice provided by the company policy, and (2) the important public policy concerns raised by the attorney-client privilege.

As for the adequacy of the notice provided by the policy, the court found that because the policy did not address the use of password-protected personal email accounts, the policy was “not entirely clear.” As for the importance of the attorney-client privilege, the court lavished it with almost-sacred verbal accoutrements, calling it a “venerable privilege . . . enshrined in history and practice.”

“Intrusion upon seclusion” as source for standard

The court noted that the analysis for a reasonable expectation of privacy in dealings between two private parties was a bit different than the analysis in a Fourth Amendment case. The common law source for the standard in this context is with the tort of “intrusion upon seclusion.” Under New Jersey law, that tort is committed when one intentionally intrudes, physically or otherwise, upon the solitude or seclusion of another or his private affairs or concerns, in a manner that would be highly offensive to a reasonable person. (This language comes from the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 652B.)

In this situation, the court found that plaintiff had both a subjective and objective expectation that the messages would be private. Supporting her subjective belief was the fact that she used a private email account that was password protected, instead of her work email account. And she did not store her password on the computer. Her belief was objectively reasonable given the absence of any discussion about private email accounts in the company policy.

Plaintiff’s expectation of privacy was also bolstered by the fact that the email messages were not illegal, nor would they impact the performance of the employer’s computer system. And they bore all the “hallmarks” of attorney-client communications.

For all these reasons, not the least of which the priority of the courts “to keep private the very type of conversations that took place here,” the court found that the conversations were protected by the attorney-client privilege.

Plaintiffs filed a defamation lawsuit against some known defendants as well as some anonymous John Doe defendants in federal court over statements posted to Complaintsboard.com. The plaintiffs did not know the names or contact information of the Doe defendants, so they needed to get that information from the Does’ Internet service provider. But the ISP would not turn that information over without a subpoena because of the restrictions of the Cable Communications Policy Act, 47 U.S.C. § 501 et seq. [More on the CCPA.]

Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(d)(1), a party generally may not seek discovery in a case until the parties have had a Rule 26(f) conference to discuss such things as discovery. Because of the Rule 26(d)(1) requirement, the plaintiffs found themselves in a catch-22 of sorts: how could they know with whom to have the Rule 26(f) conference if they did not know the defendants’ identity.

So the plaintiffs’ filed a motion with the court to allow a subpoena to issue to the ISP prior to the Rule 26(f) conference. Finding that there was good cause for the expedited discovery, the court granted the motion. It found that the subpoena was needed to ascertain the identities of the unknown defendants. [More on Doe subpoenas.] Furthermore, it was important to act sooner than later, because ISPs retain data for only a limited time.

The Plaintiffs also contended that that the known defendants would likely delete relevant information from their computer hard drives before the parties could engage in the ordinary process of discovery. So the plaintiffs’ motion also sought an order requiring the known defendants to turn over their computers to have their hard drives copied.

The court granted this part of the motion as well, ordering the known defendants to turn their computers over to the plaintiffs’ retained forensics professional immediately. The forensics professional was to make the copies of the hard drives and place those copies with the court clerk, not to be accessed or reviewed until stipulation of the parties or further order from the court.

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Evan Brown is an attorney in Chicago helping businesses and individuals identify and manage issues dealing with technology development, copyright, trademarks, domain names, software licensing, service agreements and other matters involving the internet and new media.

Evan is a partner in the law firm of Much Shelist, P.C. He is an adjunct professor of law at Chicago-Kent College of Law, and is a Domain Name Panelist with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).